Came across this photo and couldn’t help but think of Dumiso Dabengwa “working strenuously” to  block Morgan Tsvangirai’s march to State House back in 2008. The photo shows PF-Zapu supporters during the 1980 elections.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has published a provisional list of polling stations for the 31 July 2013 harmonised elections. To make things easier for would-be voters, we’ve put these into Excel and PDF spreadsheets by province, and made some clickable maps for the country and for major cities of Zimbabwe.

Know where to vote!

Remember, you have to vote in the ward and constituency where you are registered. If you know you are registered, but you can’t remember which ward or constituency you are in, you can use the My Zim Vote site to look up your entry in the voters’ roll and get that information. Just make sure you enter your ID number in the correct format so they can find your entry!

Once you know where you’re registered, look up the provisional polling stations for your area.

You can do this in a few ways:

• View Excel and PDF lists of provisional polling stations by province here
• In Harare? Use the Harare Province clickable map (Includes Epworth and Chitungwiza)
• In Bulawayo? Use the clickable map for polling stations in Bulawayo
• In Gweru? Use the clickable map for Gweru Urban polling stations (includes Chiwundura and Mkoba)
• In Masvingo? Use the clickable map for Masvingo Municipality polling stations
• In Mutare? Use the clickable map for Mutare City polling stations
• Anywhere else in Zimbabwe? Use the map for the whole country (Note this will take longer to load. Just zoom in to your area)

If you’re using the clickable maps, zoom in to the map so you can see the address for the location where you’ve registered, and click there. Cross check that the information you get in the pop-up window is correct for your ward and constituency. The list of polling stations for your ward are the polling stations where you can vote.

Whether it was a Special Vote, or Early Vote as described by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission chairperson, it still led to a Chaotic Vote. Watching this video I note that the MDC-T Secretary General who is also the Minister of Finance, is still searching for a definition for Special Constabulary. It seems the Minister got to hear about the unit when the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission published figures of members of the police force who will be casting their ballots during special voting and yet he is the one who has been running the national payroll for the past five years. As the dispute over eligible voters in the 2013 harmonized elections in Zimbabwe gathers momentum questions are being asked about the special unit in the police force called the Special Constabulary.

According to Wikipedia, our former colonial master Britain defines Special Constabulary as the part-time volunteer section of a statutory police force in the United Kingdom or some Crown dependencies. Its officers are known as special constables (all hold the office of constable no matter what their rank) or informally as specials.

In my area we have members of the neighborhood watch committee who assist the police in maintaining security during the night and maybe they also fit into this “Special Unit” definition. The debate can go further and lead to asking questions on who is paying for the services of this “special unit” of the police force and whether we still have ghost workers our national payroll?

The Research and Advocacy Unit, “outlawed” yesterday from holding a public voter’s roll audit says an eye-popping 2 million Zimbabweans failed to have names included on the voter’s roll during the voter registration exercise, while another 1 million mysterious names appear in the register.

A young man doing some degree at the Chinhoyi University of Technology told me the other day he went along with his dad to register, and when they got to the queue they were given “tickets” with numbers apparently to ensure no wise guys jumped the queue.

But the young man complained that while his dad was given a ticket numbered 220, he was given one numbered 651, never mind that he was standing behind his dad!

He thought it was a bad joke and now he finds himself missing his democratic right to vote!

He is certainly one of many of the 2 million RAU says will not vote despite being eligible, and as Tsvangirai has said, no matter who wins, this election will not be legitimate.

How can it be when many people will not be able to vote, not because they have lost faith in the whole process of elections being the only way to determine their future, but because the system literally shut them out.